Midcap housebuilders Galliford Try (LON:GFRD) and Barratt Developments (LON:BDEV) released their interim reports this week.
Galliford said its pre-tax profits jumped 89 percent to £32.2 million in the final six months of 2011 as its house sales hit a record level, leading to a 30 percent increase in revenues to £746.8 million.
As a result, earnings per share soared 110 percent to 31.1 pence per share, prompting the company to double its interim dividend to nine pence.
Meanwhile, peer Barratt Developments returned to pretax profits thanks to a 8.6 per cent rise in revenues from a year earlier.
Revenues rose to £952.8 million in the six months to end-December 2011 from £877.6 million a year earlier, and the group swung to a pretax profit of £21.6 million compared with a loss of £4.6 million previously.
Housebuilding completions for the first half rose to 5,117 from 4,796 a year earlier.
Barratt said it has made a good start to the second half, with private reservations over the first seven weeks running 21.8 percent ahead of this time last year.
Net debt as at the end of the first half came in at £542.2 million, lower than expected and only slightly higher than £537 million a year earlier.
Barratt is forecasting net debt to fall below the previously expected level, to around £350 million at the end of June this year.
Fellow FTSE 250 constituent, bookmaker William Hill (LON:WMH), called its 2011 results “very positive” as it achieved revenue growth of six percent despite the lack of major football tournaments.
The group said its performance got a boost from the expansion of its online business through new mobile and text-betting channels, leading to a 28 percent jump in online revenues to £321.3million.
Elsewhere in the midcap index, real estate firm Rightmove (LON:RMV) said its revenues surged 19 percent to £97 million last year and offered a bullish outlook for 2012.
According to the real estate firm, which runs rightmove.co.uk, there is “every prospect” that this will be the year when the industry’s spend on advertising in the internet will exceed that on local newspapers for the first time.
Meanwhile, revenues at another FTSE 250 constituent Berendsen (LON:BRSN) climbed one percent to £992 million in 2011. Pre-tax profits improved 15 percent to £111.8 million, prompting the textile rental company to raise its dividend by 10 percent to 23.4 pence.
The group highlighted the “significant progress” it has made with its strategic review, which has resulted in stronger capabilities in sales, procurement and human resource management.
The group has also achieved an improvement in its cash position, which stood at £93.1 million at the end of the year, up from £75.5 million a year earlier.
Moving to small caps, Agriterra (LON:AGTA) has taken an important step in developing its cocoa operations in Sierra Leone by acquiring a five acre site in Kenema, the country’s third largest city, in order to develop a processing and management facility.
Last month it set out ambitious plans for its Tropical Farms subsidiary, which will expand its cocoa operation to 40 locations from 12 currently.
Agriterra’s strategy is to become a leading buyer, trader and producer of high quality, sustainable and traceable cocoa in Sierra Leone.
The 2,000 square metre cocoa facility will be next to a dual carriageway, which is the main artery in and out of the cocoa growing region of the country.
It will also house administrative and buying offices as well as vehicle maintenance facilities.
In the meantime, Lo-Q (LON:LOQ) posted bumper profits last year as more people who visited theme parks used its virtual queuing technology.
The company said the 17 per cent increase in profits to £2.7 million and 20 per cent increase in revenues to £24.5 million exceeded both its own and the market's expectations.
Like-for-like sales rose by 17 per cent, while there was a nine per cent increase to 1.2 million in people at the parks using the company’s virtual queuing products, which mean customers do not have to wait in line to get on a ride.
The increase was despite a 3% drop in the total number of people who attended the theme parks overall.
The company’s main customer is US theme park operator Six Flags, which recently extended its contract with the company for another six years.
In other news, CPP Group (LON:CPP) said it had reached agreement with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) over issues surrounding its sale of card protection and identity protection products in the UK.
It comes after the firm's shares were suspended on Monday following communications with the authority about the FSA's investigations into sales practices.
CPP said it had agreed with the FSA to carry out a past business review in regard to both products, in which the company will contact customers who CPP had approached directly to purchase the products.
The company has also agreed to implement changes, overseen by the FSA, to its renewals process, it said.
This week’s research included a note on IT firm Geong International (LON:GNG) from Evolution Securities. The broker reiterated its ‘buy’ recommendation on the company on the back of its nine month results report.
In the update, Geong said it was confident of "satisfactory" results for the full year despite the onset of uncertainty in China.
Revenues were marginally lower than in the same period of 2010 at £7.6 million, however, £2.8 million of this was generated in the December quarter.
Evolution analyst Meng Li said that even though Geong’s nine month revenues accounted for just 59 percent of Evo's full year forecast for 2012, this may have been due to seasonality and accounting procedures.
The analyst also noted the strong revenue generation in the third quarter.
In the meantime, Geong’s order book stood at £14 million at the end of the December quarter, slightly below the £15.6 million at the end of September. Li said this was due to growing software-as-a-service (SaaS) contracts, which are shorter term.
The SaaS business accounted for 21 percent of total group revenues with Geong expecting “significantly higher” SaaS revenues in the final quarter of its financial year.
“Moreover, management believes that SaaS business will increase its contribution in the fourth quarter as the performance related fees are earned, which will help the company in achieving a satisfactory outturn for 2012,” said Li.